If you're familiar with things like Popeye and some of the old comic characters, you would oftentimes see this cast of characters that takes on different roles depending on the comic or cartoon. They might be businessman in one [cartoon] or a pirate in another. Depending on the story that was being told, they would change roles. So, to a certain degree, I look at our characters in a similar way and feel that they can take on different roles in different games. It's more like they're one big family, or maybe a troupe of actors.

You have a set of characters. They work well as an ensemble; so well, in fact, that they can be slotted into just about any scenario you care to imagine, within the constraints of genre. So you can see them, identical but for different trappings (this character was wielding a sword, now it's a blaster pistol...), in places as diverse as Feudal Japan, the Modern Era, Space Opera, etc., etc., etc.

What you have is a Universal-Adaptor Cast: an ensemble is cast into an odd situation and yet fits in perfectly because their roles and characters are so well-defined. The have the same personalities and the same relationships, but play out the conventions of that genre regardless of how bizarre it would be for them normally.

The various Gurren Lagann Parallel Works music videos seem to suggest that the cast is one of these, with the exception of the 8th one, which is canon and tells the story of Lordgenome's Start of Darkness.

This dates back to the beginnings of anime, with Osamu Tezuka's troupe of characters. They were a little more versatile than the standard commedia troupe (several of them "played" both heroes and villains), but the idea remains that they are "actors" portraying characters.

Code Geass spinoff manga Strange Tales of the Bakamatsu places the cast of characters in pre-Meiji Japan, with La Résistance being the nationalist rebels and Lelouch himself leading The Shinsengumi as a cover identity. Oh, and in this universe, "Geass" means the ability to summon Knightmare Frames.

Neon Genesis Evangelion has two Alternate Universe / Alternate Continuity spin offs: Angelic Days and Gakuen Datenroku, the former being a fluffy shojo manga and other one being an X Meets Y scenario with Persona. There is also the radio drama Shin Seiki Evangelion, which is where the characters are trying to create a new show so they can continue after, you know, all of humanity is destroyed at the end. As the title sounds, Asuka wants a sentai show.

One Piece frequently puts the Straw Hats into alternate universes, such as one in which they are all fantasy monsters and another in which they — even the males — are middle-aged women. The most frequently used setting is one in 19th Century Japan, in which Luffy is in the police force of Japan under the rule of Cobra. The Chopperman setting, in which Chopper acts as a superhero with Nami as his assistant and Luffy as his Humongous Mecha against Usopp, Franky and a Quirky Miniboss Squad composed of the rest of the crew, initially started out as special that was a few minutes long, but got a full-length filler episode after the Ice Hunter Arc.

School Rumble tried this a few times as well. Even more so in its short sequel of sorts, School Rumble Z which was mostly composed of the cast in various different alternate universe or possible future settings.

Lupin III and his crew (and you can add Zenigata, too) have found themselves facing pretty much anything that TMS Entertainment can come up with for them. From the 15th century to the 22nd century, they've found themselves in all sorts of situations.

Comic Books

Most major superhero teams have had "imaginary stories" where they were medieval knights, steampunk warriors, etc.

Disney comics often feature the characters in various different settings, such as medieval fantasy, science fiction and parodies of famous books or movies. In one Mickey Mouse story, Mickey and pals performed what was supposed to be a play by Moličre but was actually a parody of one.

The Archie Comics gang. Including for a while, various spinoffs were they were in space, in the past, or superheroes.

The Brazilian equivalent of Archie, Monica's Gang — helps that there alongside the core group there are Loads and Loads of Characters in various settings (the hillbillies, the jungle animals, the astronaut, the caveman...).

The Judge Dredd Alternity Special put several characters from the Dreddverse into various alternate historical periods, such as Dredd taking on Al Capone, Shimura facing off against the Angel Gang during the Old West and Mean Machine Angel in a Film NoirPrivate Detective parody.

In general terms, the internet also offers fan artworks of the Disney Princesses line-up in numerous roles — as boys, as zombies, steampunk, etc.

The premise of Alternate Universe Fics, especially the ubiquitous High School A.U., taking established characters from a work of fiction and putting them in wildly different scenarios. Due to Sturgeon's Law most of these tend to be full of Character Derailment, with the worst going to In Name Only levels, while the best are marvelous explorations of characters reacting to a new environment while remaining essentially the same.

The Carry On movies are a great example of this. A group of comedy actors (that did change gradually over the years, as people joined, left, or came back) made films together in a wide variety of settings and parodying a wide variety of genres.

Likewise, the Marx Brothers. The brothers, plus Margaret Dumont, always play the same basic characters under different names, transplanted into any number of settings — race course, opera house, a very thinly-disguised Nazi Germany, and so on.

Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius novels do this explicitly. Many of the characters are clearly identified with their original Commedia dell'Arte counterparts, with Jerry as Harlequin, and swung through a wide variety of settings and situations without clear explanation.

Hal Duncan's The Book of All Hours does this extensively with its central cast. This is an interesting case, because each character is the living embodiment of an archetype superimposed upon multiple realities. So by the second book, where reality has degenerated into isolated wells of time and space, and the characters move from one reality well to another, they all become Dangerously Genre Savvy, having absolutely no qualms about screwing all possible realities to their advantage. This results in them routinely sitting around a table and leafing through the "script" for the next reality, deciding who is going to play what.

The Years of Rice and Salt is an Alternate History of the 700 years following The Black Death, the "alternative" being thrown in by the idea that all Europeans died, not just 1/3 of them.note Not counting a few isolated populations in places like the Orkney Islands. The same group of characters are reincarnated as characters with the same first letters of their names, until 2002 CE.

Northern Exposure did this a few times, once casting all the series regulars as the turn-of-the-century founders of Cicely, and once all showing up in a dream sequence Joel had about returning to New York.

Chespirito, when not doing his usual characters, can be from Christopher Columbus to Sancho Panza. The rest of the cast tend to be this outside El Chavo del ocho, where only Chespirito's character is recurring.

An in-universe example in a Twilight Zone episode in which a prisoner on Death Row states that it's all his dream, and the people in his dream are all from his waking life — and they swap roles every night (i.e. The Judge becomes a guard, the priest becomes his lawyer, etc.).

Whenever an episode of JAG was set in different time setting (usually a character was being told a story by someone else via Flashback), they would use the existing cast to fill in the roles of the new characters. Whenever a story centered on Harm's father, a fighter pilot during The Vietnam War, he would be placed by the same actor, plus a mustache. One episode in particular played with this: Mac has been researching a case where an Age of Sail captain was court martialed for summarily hanging several crewmen suspected of planning a mutiny. She ends up having a dream about the investigation, with her fiancé Mic playing the role of the Captain, Mac playing his wife, and Harmon Rabb (Mac's unresolved love interest eventually revealed (just before the hanging) to be playing one of the mutineers, naturally segueing into Mac jumping awake to ponder the implications.

The Blackish episode "Pops' Pops' Pops" does this when Pops tells a story about the Johnson family history.

Music

Vocaloid characters. De-facto, they are tabula rasa (Miku did have a manga series, though) and it's up to the producers just what they are supposed to be— which is largely the point of having virtual songstresses. Even the official merchandise is in it: the sheer variation of Miku figmas is staggering, and these are based on the most popular imagining of Miku.

Puppet Shows

The Muppets, who manage to play themselves whether on a vaudeville stage or in Treasure Island. Yet, and this is the unique part, they still capture the roles they're playing. The Muppet Christmas Carol is widely regarded as one of the best adaptations of the book ever made. The trick is that the most iconic characters are played by humans playing it more or less straight, for instance Scrooge in Christmas Carol and Silver in Treasure Island, providing an anchor for all the wacky side characters.

Similarly, many sketches in Sesame Street would use the characters in a variety of settings.

Radio

The Goon Show has the same troupe of characters in a different setting every episode.

Theater

The best example is Commedia dell'Arte, an Italian theater tradition that uses a group of characters whose characteristics and attributes are so well-known that the entire play is ad-libbed.

The Sera Myu has a sequence where Chibi-Moon and Saturn are transported to the Edo Era of Japan. The other characters show up as apparently past life versions of themselves. Usagi and the Inner senshi (sans mercury) are a group of noble thieves, Setsuna appears as a traditional comedian/announcer complete with a paper fan, Mamoru as a local playboy who is secretly the magistrate, and Ami as a village girl who has a crystal ball similar to the one carryed by the Inner Senshi and is thus destined to be their companion. One of villains shows up as an apparently time-displaced Mexican named "This is a pear".

Video Games

The beatmania series has background animations that show the same characters in different settings.

Each Mecha's Story Mode in Tech Romancer basically features them as if they were the star of their own Mecha Show, with the other fighters as secondary characters.

The various Super Mario Bros. spin-offs provide best examples for the video game industry. I.E. they don't just adapt to narrative genres, they adapt to video game and gameplay genres too. The ones below are just the popular ones that got sequels; they've also guest starred in Dance Dance Revolution, SSX and NBA Street.

Moreover, the series has been doing this from the very beginning. Donkey Kong was about a mean ape tormenting his owner Mario, where the second game cast Mario as a cruel owner who caged DK. The player controlled DK Jr. to save him.

Mario even did a first person rail shooter in Yoshi's Safari on the SNES.

The Sonic Storybook Series has Sonic the Hedgehog characters filling fairytale roles (save Sonic himself, who gets pulled into the adventures as himself). For instance, Knuckles is Sinbad the Sailor in Sonic and the Secret Rings and Sir Gawain in Sonic and the Black Knight. On another note, Sonic is almost as successful as Mario when it comes to adapting to other gameplay styles for spinoffs, having appeared in fighting games, racing games, a party game, and a Metroidvania among other things.

In The Legend of Zelda there are many different incarnations of Link and Zelda that occur in different time periods. Fans have come up with numerous explanations for why Link and Zelda reoccur such as reincarnation, descendants, or just some sort heroic spirit that reappears when evil threatens Hyrule. However, on a meta-level, Shigeru Miyamoto says that he sees Link and Zelda like old theatrical cartoon characters like in Popeye who can be recast in many different situations.

The enemies in the Ape Escape franchise are always intelligent apes that adapt to wherever they're stationed, no matter the country, time period, or even TV genre they're stuck in. This applies not just to the voiceless Mook monkeys, but the Five-Bad Band, the Freaky Monkey Five. These boss characters will build giant robot dragons or become ninja masters just to fit in with their station.

Web Animation

Homestar Runner, as seen by the many many alternative settings (futuristic Japan, medieval times, 1800s US just to name a few) and premises.

The Something AwfulPeezle Ward series of Flash Tub cartoons are various movies that place the same four characters in various movie "adpatations" of a fake author's stories, ranging from Fire Fighters to Astronauts to Time Travelers.

As Garry's Mod and Source Filmmaker both come with models for characters from various Valve games, said characters are frequently used this way in video made with either program, especially the cast of Team Fortress 2.

Web Comics

Arthur, King of Time and Space slots its cast into science-fiction, the contemporary world, super-heroics, and various more specific parodies (i.e. Mash), and it always works. How much of this is the versatility of the cast, and how much is not stretching settings farther than it works is debatable. Still, just as impressive, either way. In some settings characters are gender-flipped, and still work just as well.

The whole series of French animated TV shows Il était une fois...... is a definite example of such a cast. It started with Il était une fois... l'Homme, which followed a cast of similar characters throughout the ages (though with variable nationalities and ethnicities). The same cast was then used in a Space Opera (Il était une fois... l'Espace), as anthropomorphized cells in the human body (Il était une fois... la Vie), and other edutainment entries.

Weirdly, The Super Mario Bros. Super Show tries this route in its animated version... though all of the different settings remains in the Mushroom Kingdom. Made even weirder by the fact that Mario and his crew were always unambiguously themselves — while Koopa and his Troop more often then not completely built themselves around the theme of that episode's world. Some themed version of Koopa was used far more often then the simple "vanilla" one.

Similar to the Mario example is Popeye, who might be in Ancient Rome for one cartoon and then play Aladdin in another. Bluto, likewise, might be himself, Sindbad, Hercules, or someone else to fit the theme.

Walter Melon, from the Animated Adaptation of Ach!lle Talon. That "hero for hire" does replacements for heroes (like Superman, Casanova, Luke Skywalker, Tarzan, Rambo...) and (in later seasons) historical figures, despite the fact that he's overweight and don't look like a typical hero. His friend Bitterbug is the usual sidekick, and Walter's nemesis, Sneero, is playing the villains (Lex Luthor, Darth Vader, The Joker, Captain Hook, Doctor Octopus...)

In an example that's half In-Universe and half straight, "Hearth's Warming Eve" put the core cast on a pageant about the founding of Equestria, and the historic figures they play all have exaggerated versions of their own personalities.

This was pretty much the point of Hello Kitty's Furry Tale Theater, a short-lived cartoon where Kitty and her friends played out various stories like "The Ugly Duckling".

Certain episodes of Phineas and Ferb have seen the cast living in ancient China ("Doof Dynasty"), the stone age ("Tri-Stone Area"), a swords-and-sorcery fantasy ("Excaliferb"), an Indiana Jones-like setting ("Phineas and Ferb and the Temple of Juatchadoon"), and a turn-of-the-century Danville ("Steampunx"). Soon the cast will appear in a galaxy far far away. Then, of course, there was the Whole Plot Reference to The Wizard of Oz...

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